Mapbox product updates
Changelog:
Hey Builders,
How are you?
Our global team is WFH these past few weeks, and the nature of our business puts data from this global pandemic in front of us every day. Like you, we are applauding front-line health care workers, washing our hands, and listening to experts’ guidance on flattening the curve.
In maps this month, we announced deferred payment until Q4 for our travel and tourism customers impacted by COVID-19, we shared 7 best practices for mapping a pandemic, and we’re choosing to spotlight the helpers whose maps are connecting people in need with vital services.
To support shelter-in-place practices around the world, we’re celebrating what’s not moving:
- Zenly launched #StayAtHome challenge with a leaderboard and unique interactions to support COVID-19 awareness and peer support for sheltering.
- BuzzFeed News and Los Angeles Times published street-level visualizations using Mapbox Traffic data to show how COVID-19 has affected traffic patterns in cities around the world. For more details on live traffic data, read the post.
To support our WFH community, we also released a downloadable maps coloring book, and a guide for creating Zoom virtual background map.
Help is on the map.
Finding meals, childcare, mobile healthcare
- World Central Kitchen is organizing restaurants, chefs, and kitchens to safely distribute healthy, fresh meals across the country to those in need due to the epidemic, and launched Chefs for America with a map of crowd-sourced locations where meals are available.
- Clinician Nexus pivoted to operate as MN CovidSitters, and is now matching UMN Medical School students on halted clinical rotations with local doctors and nurses who need childcare volunteers while they continue to work.
- Workpath, the only dispatch platform for mobile healthcare services, is helping immunocompromised and vulnerable populations receive regular medical care during the pandemic: “Since the first case of COVID-19 in the US was confirmed in January Workpath’s appointment volume has surged 94%.”
- We’re also seeing developers mapping support resources closer to home, like U.S. mutual aid hubs, volunteer opportunities in South America, and stores and services still open in the Philippines. Small business support is also on the map, with this gift card finder in Germany and this Support NYC DTC map from Air.
If you’re building to aid COVID-19 response, we want to help. Reach out to our Community team for support.
Code Expression.
What did we do without in and within?
The highlight of the latest Mapbox GL releases on Web, Android, and iOS is the within expression, allowing you to check whether a feature is in the bounds of a GeoJSON Polygon, Feature, or FeatureCollection and apply styling logic accordingly. We put together some demos showing real-world use cases to help inspire you:
- Show places accessible near a given landmark
- Show places accessible around a given route
- Show only data within a geographic boundary
On the theme of expressions, the latest mobile releases introduce support for the in expression. If your data has a property with string values, you can now parse those values with the in expression at runtime.
- A simple example: you could change the labels that contain the letter “n” to green from the fallback color of orange with the expression: “text-color”: [“case”, [“in”, “n”, [“get”, “name_en”]], ”green”, “orange”].
- A more real-world application: if your map has a search bar for POIs, you could highlight POIs whose names match the user input as they type. With the in expression, this matching logic can be done entirely client-side.
THE TAKEAWAY
Location context makes an app experience more engaging and exciting, and the within and in expressions add that context seamlessly. Share what you build on Twitter with #BuiltWithMapbox so we can celebrate what these expressions unlock for you.
Easy sheet
Use “Sheet Mapper” with a Google Sheet
In a crisis, organizations often use spreadsheets to collaborate and collect new data. Our new Sheet Mapper solution helps teams create a live-updating map that displays a marker for each location, powered by a simple Google sheet: Add a new row to your sheet, and a new marker appears on your map.
Learn more about Sheet Mapper here or join our live-coding webinar for a live demo and Q+A with our team.
THE TAKEAWAY
We must do everything we can to unblock collaboration and enable lightweight solutions for fast crisis response. Now, you can kick-start a quick map with a little help from Google Sheets and tabletop.js.
Things that count
New boundaries, style deprecation
- 4 million: Number of expertly curated boundaries included in the latest version of Mapbox Boundaries
- 4 petabytes: Size of the Mapbox global imagery layer, made up of almost a dozen sources.
- 450 million: Number of websites that can now add the WordPress map block
- 54 days: Time until Studio Classic styles may no longer be requested from our Legacy Maps and Legacy Static Images APIs
- 949: Number of grievances filed by Mighty Earth since launching Forest Report rapid response system to track deforestation from palm oil, soy, and cattle industries
- 10 minutes: Time it takes to complete the U.S. Census that means so much to map-makers
Bonus Bytes.
Dank Maps
- RALLY making magic with Mapbox + Apple AR Quick Look
- Incredible TN tornadoes flyover interactive from @usatodaygraphics
- Ukraine National Security and Defense Council COVID-19 map
- IBM and The Weather Channel add coronavirus incident maps
- Strava Routes: New and improved
Fresh Docs
- [guide] Vision SDK basics for iOS and Android
- [tutorial] Draw points of interest using the Mapbox Vision SDK for iOS and Android
- [tutorial] AR customization using Mapbox Vision SDK for iOS and Android
- [tutorial] Custom detections using Mapbox Vision SDK for Android
- [tutorial] Use the Mapbox Vision SDK for Android with an external USB camera
- [example] Java SDK: Directions route profiles
- [example] Maps SDK for Android: Baseball spray chart
- [example] Maps SDK for Android: Circle icon toggle
- [example] Maps SDK for Android: Zoom to show a cluster’s leaves
- [example] Mapbox GL JS: Add a canvas source
- [reference] Traffic signs reference
Watch and Learn
- New Mapbox Styling Webinar from @jonni_walker
- How to update a classic style in modern Mapbox Studio
- How to deploy a collaborative map with Mapbox Quick Launch
- How to use Mapbox in Figma with the Mapsicle plugin
- How to add markers to a map with Mapbox GL JS
- How to install Mapbox Atlas
Join our team
- Senior Engineering Manager, Search — SF or D.C.
- Security Engineer, Security & Compliance — SF
- Manager, Solutions Architecture — SF or D.C.
- Director, Technical Account Management — SF
Skimbox is our monthly newsletter highlighting recent product improvements and use cases so you can easily stay up to date on what’s new. To get every issue of this newsletter, subscribe here.
Maps feature data from Mapbox and OpenStreetMap and their data partners. Images in this email include alt tags to communicate content to visually impaired recipients.
What’s new | April 2020 was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.